For an art form that once boldly set out to question conventional divisions of gender, ballet now seems to be retreating towards the butch – ironically, just as the rest of the world is moving obsessively to the femme.
Scroll back a century or so and Nijinsky cross-dressed at masked balls, danced on pointe and covered himself in petals as le spectre de la rose; in Les Biches, his sister Nijinska shamelessly choreographed all manner of sexual indeterminacy and suggested that girls could also be boys. Then came the Carry On stereotype of limp-wristed ephebes in pink tights with an ominous bulge – every mother’s nightmare in the homophobic post-war era, and perhaps still a source of psychotic contempt among certain sections of society.
But all that is in marked decline: today men who dance spend more time pumping iron than they do inhaling the scent of lilies. And while the dwindling of the stigma is welcome, perhaps something of value has been lost, or is in danger of being devalued – an ambiguity of manner, an embrace of the feminine, a grace and delicacy of gesture that goes beyond the merely dainty.
Today men who dance spend more time pumping iron than they do inhaling the scent of lilies
Leading the field here are the BalletBoyz, a troupe established by Michael Nunn and William Trevitt in 2000. Their accent is firmly on the exploration of masculinity: occasionally a female dancer has been imported, but their USP is that of being a crack gang of West Side Story streetwise guys, sporty lads in sweatshirts with Olympian physiques competing in feats of exotic athleticism rather than striking effetely narcissistic poses.
BalletBoyz’s current programme, touring nationally until mid-May, has been rolled over from a project aborted by the pandemic.
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